Grow your Customer Base by Accepting Credit Card and Debit Card Payments

As a customer, if you’ve been told at the checkout point that you can pay only by cash or check, you know the feeling. Apart from the annoyance of having wasted time and effort on shopping for stuff you couldn’t pay for, this particular store or service runs the risk of being crossed off your list of customer-friendly facilities. So, when you’re acting as the merchant, don’t let your customers feel that way about you!

Let’s face it – credit cards and debit cards are here to stay. Whether yours is a “bricks” or “clicks” business, the ability to accept credit cards and debit cards provides a range of benefits for the health, growth, and sustainability of your business.

Digital Payments Have Taken Over

Digital payments outnumbered cash payments for the first time in 2015 and there has been no looking back since. The reasons for this revolution are not hard to find:

• Cash and check payments are seen as outdated, less convenient and cumbersome.
• Maintaining cash reserves on your premises is unsafe, making you and your business vulnerable to theft, embezzlement, and fraud.
• Checks take time to clear and business owners run the risk of being handed bad checks.
• With your competitors offering credit card and debit card payment facilities, you can get left out of the race.
• Card payments are deposited swiftly into your bank account.
• Some card processing packages come with value-adds like accounting, data analysis, regular reporting, documentation, and tracking.
• Card payments legitimize your business because customers trust the card brands they patronize.
• Accepting credit cards and debit cards can help to leverage a larger customer base.
• You get to net a wider range of customers: big and small ticket purchasers, impulse buyers, tourists, local people, business travelers
• Being safe and convenient, card payments allow you to focus on your core areas of business

Accepting Credit Cards and Debit Cards Can Grow Your Customer Base

Recent studies show that shoppers and shopping habits have changed drastically over the last decade. The “digital native” customer (those born in the mid 1980s or later) knows and can access many more options if you don’t meet their expectations. In-store business owners have observed that customers are much more impatient and less inclined to wait in line to pay.

50% of Americans report that they don’t carry more than $20 in cash in their wallets. Nearly 10% say that they seldom carry cash at all. Most of them own at least three credit/debit cards. The millennial generation prefers to pay by card even for products or services that cost less than $5. So if you don’t accept card payments, you have automatically excluded a huge demographic.

Customers expect to pay online only by card. The nature of e-commerce business websites demands only card payments and if customers want to send flowers or chocolates to a loved one in another continent, they know that they can only pay via a credit card or debit card. It’s important for e-commerce websites to provide a safe, reliable, secure and easy-to-use payment gateway.

Card payment facilities open an important method of understanding customer behavior, staying in sync with trends, boosting your brand and enhancing your revenues.

For more information on how to grow your customer base by accepting credit card and debit card payments, or to sign up for a merchant account, please call (888) 924-2743 or go to Charge.com.